"Come out! with me the oriole cries, Escape the demon that pursues you! And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise, Still hiding, farther onward woos you." "Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, Has poured from thy syringa thicket The quaintly discontinuous lays To which I hold a season-ticket, "A season-ticket cheaply bought With a dessert of pilfered berries, And who so oft my soul has caught With morn and evening voluntaries, "Deem me not faithless, if all day Among my dusty books I linger, "A bird is singing in my brain And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain Fed with the sap of old romances. "I ask no ampler skies than those His magic music rears above me, No falser friends, no truer foes, And does not Doña Clara love me? "Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, Then silence deep with breathless stars, "O music of all moods and climes, Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, Where still, between the Christian chimes, The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly! "O life borne lightly in the hand, For friend or foe with grace Castilian! O valley safe in Fancy's land, Not tramped to mud yet by the million! "Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale To his, my singer of all weathers, My Calderon, my nightingale, My Arab soul in Spanish feathers. "Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, James Russell Lowell. THE FAIRIES Up the airy mountain, Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather! Down along the rocky shore They live on crispy pancakes Of the black mountain lake, High on the hilltop The old King sits; He is now so old and gray, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music On cold starry nights, Το sup with the queen Of the gay Northern Lights. They took her lightly back, Between the night and morrow; They thought that she was fast asleep, But she was dead with sorrow. By the craggy hillside, As dig them up in spite, He shall find their sharpest thorns Up the airy mountain, And white owl's feather! William Allingham. AULD ROBIN GRAY! WHEN the sheep are in the fauld, and the kye at hame, And a' the warld to rest are gane, The waes o' my heart fa' in showers frae my e'e, While my gudeman lies sound by me. Young Jamie lo'ed me weel, and sought me for his bride; But saving a croun he had naething else beside: sea; And the croun and the pund were baith for me. He hadna been awa' a week but only twa, When my father brak his arm, and the cow was stown awa'; My mother she fell sick, and my Jamie at the sea And auld Robin Gray came a-courtin' me. My father couldna work, and my mother couldna spin; I toiled day and night, but their bread I couldna win; Auld Rob maintained them baith, and wi' tears in his e'e Said, "Jennie, for their sakes, oh, marry me!" 1 Note 3. |